


Cards on the Table

by VaguelyCreativeName



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Community: HPFT
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:34:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24896242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VaguelyCreativeName/pseuds/VaguelyCreativeName
Summary: Poppy Pomfrey's never felt in control of her life. Now it's time to take matters into her own hands, and fight for the things she holds dear.
Kudos: 1





	Cards on the Table

**Author's Note:**

> CW: Includes a brief mention and non-graphic description of miscarriage

Poppy Pomfrey never meant to spend her life at Hogwarts, but life seldom does as expected. She knows this all too well, for wasn’t it a hand ill dealt that first brought her to this school, covering somebody else’s sick leave? What was supposed to be only a month’s worth of wages suddenly turned into years, decades, an entire generation.

There’s little Poppy hasn’t seen in her years as a school nurse. Years of scrambling to look after hundreds of children and teenagers who have yet to master their magic have ensured she’s treated everything in the book, and enough again to write her own. When she came to the school as a newly-qualified healer, people were disappointed, and patronising. Naturally, no one told her so outright, but it was evident nobody was happy with her decision. Her parents raised their eyebrows in surprise and scorn that their daughter really did want to pursue a career in healing, and that she’d spent the years before acquiring a degree, but still no husband. Her friend was angry that she chose the most matronly – and in their eyes least empowering – position available in the field. Her superiors thought she was wasting her talents in paediatric healing, and didn’t she want to work towards something more worthwhile?

None of them understood that Poppy acted as little more than a pawn in her own game; the dice had been rolled and she moved accordingly, in this instance to Hogwarts. Poppy Pomfrey had never been a friend of plans, having learnt early that they were easily foiled. Besides, while Poppy often wasn’t quite sure what she wanted, she had always recognised that others were even less knowledgeable in that regard.

Life at Hogwarts has taught Poppy to take each day as it comes, and to tackle its challenges as they face her. And they are far more varied than they ever could have been at St. Mungo’s, where she would have spent weeks on end researching the same potion. A school full of children fighting and wrestling each other on the ground and on the Quidditch pitch means Poppy’s seen more bruises, scrapes, and broken bones than any of her colleagues working in A&E in their lifetimes. A school full of students learning mostly through trial and error guarantees she’s infallibly proficient in dealing with spell damage, reasonably adept at handling potion-induced ailments, and dependably skilled undoing half-successful transfigurations and reattaching ears. She’s taken care of half-human cats, boys sprouting fur, waves of homesickness, and an endless array of Quidditch injuries. She’s uncovered countless my-cat-bit-me-but-clearly-has-poisonous-fangs mysteries. Poppy knows how to help all of those patients. Some take a little longer to heal, but in the end, all of them leave her hospital wing healthy and whole, and a few spaces ahead of where they were.

Four times, she was helpless. It still hurts to think of those students and admitting there was nothing she could do was hard, unbearably so. Thankfully, those instances are few and far between, because every one of them is shattering, and Poppy is left to pick up the pieces. From others, she’s learnt and now knows enough to catch the signs earlier, before the game is up.

Every year however, without fail, there are the girls. Some come to her office fully aware of what’s going on, with a detailed plan of action laid out before them. Initially, they may seem confident, but most of them are just as scared and uncertain, and in search of guidance as the rest, who come to her in tears, in the dead of night, or else complaining of an upset stomach. No matter the state they arrived in, they are all of them wanting the same things: solace, and directions. The former Poppy was able to provide, at least in most cases, even if it always felt like too little, too late. The latter, she never could give. Ultimately, no one but the patients could decide the course of action, even if Poppy sometimes felt it was less about choosing the right path, and more about finding the least wrong one.

No matter their next moves, the decisions made would stay with the girls for a long time, and more often than not shape the course their lives would take. Mostly, Poppy was optimistic about the students’ futures, though often she felt both healer and patient were but ill-equipped for the road ahead, no matter what had been decided. A pregnancy, especially an unplanned one, was always a challenging and traumatic experience, regardless of how long the mother carried her child. It was worse, infinitely so, when Fortune’s hand won the match, and a child was lost in floods of tears, and blood.

Poppy was not naïve enough to believe unwanted pregnancies could ever be avoided entirely, not in a school where access to the other sex’s dorms is all too easily obtained, but she knows for certain the number would be far smaller if Hogwarts would only concede to educate its students, that so many children could be shielded from harrowing scenes, from choices they’re far too young to make. Countless times she’s tried to make various headmasters see sense, each attempt as futile as the next one. Dippet was far too scandalised at the thought of young people having sex, too insistent in his belief that irrespective of how many cases Poppy presented, these must simply be outliers, brought upon by special circumstances and ill breeding to ever spare her as much as a second glance. Surely, these girls would never be able to contain themselves, so there really was no need to air such dirty business, was there, Poppy? When Professor Dumbledore took over, Poppy had first been hopeful that the young innovator might listen, but he had been too caught up in matters of academia and war, too removed from such worldly troubles to concern himself with teenage intercourse.

No matter how often she’s tried, how many girls she’s tried and failed to comfort, how many diagrams, statistics, proposals and curricula she’s thrown at his head, Poppy’s been dismissed, kicked off the board like a pawn no longer useful. But there’s yet another girl, a young woman with too little of her life behind her to make decisions of such magnitude, crying in her office while powerful old men are sitting in theirs, arms folded and indifferent to the well-being of students and too set in their ways to consider a different path. Utterly at peace while another’s world is shattered, while there’s a student half-collapsed on a metal folding chair, faced with the hardest decision of her life, another new addition to the helpless figurines in the great game of life. Another child who exists in a world of reactions and corollaries rather than actions, just like Poppy has for so many years. This time, high time she took matters into her own hands, she’s had enough. Poppy’s off to see the headmaster, and she’ll make him listen this time.


End file.
